So our Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that liturgy, of the days when Cæsar ruled the world and thought he could stamp out the faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as to a God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of unsolved problems, in spite of later changes, there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours. ~Fortescue

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Gioventù Cristiana (Christian Youth) is an Italian Christian (Catholic) forum that aims to bring young people closer in a Christan way. It also promotes knowledge about and sincere love for the Liturgy in general. It allows young people (and whoever wants to join it) the opportunity to have respectful discussions regarding the Liturgy, the Faith, Morals and all the social teachings, dogmas and practices/traditions of the Church.

While Gioventù Cristiana does not claim to be or favor traditionalists, many of its members are open traditionalists or open to the true traditionalism of the Church in many ways and forms. For those of you who would like to check the forum out, go to the links provided at the very end of this post.

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Following is the message written by the founder of the group and the main administrator of the forum.

Christ is risen! This good news that concerns everyone who comes into the world must be announced incessantly by word and by pen, by telegraph, telephone, and radio, through books and through the theater, from the heights of the pulpit and through the microphones of popular assemblies, in the cities and on the highways, by television and in the darkened halls of the cinema, on the eight continents and in all languages, in verse and in prose, through didactic teaching and the evocative medium of poetry, in all varieties of literature and in all forms of uproar of this news: Christ is risen! ~The History of Jesus Christ

Saturday, March 22, 2008

For a younger generation which, as recent investigations show, is fascinated by comfort, money, security, investment, cars, television, refrigerators, and washing machines, for these young people, who admittedly believe neither in love nor in politics (they barely believe in pleasure, certainly not in passion), who still take an idolatrous attitude toward science and for the most part accept indifference in matters of religion as good as mental hygiene and economy of the heart, for such young people what can the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ still represent?

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Never in the whole history of Christianity has there been a more appropriate time to meditate on the burial of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have seen God die, we have seen Him placed in the ground, we have seen the great stone rolled against His tomb, we have seen the supercilious legalists place seals on the sepulcher. And is it in This tormented Body, now heaped with aromatics, that we are asked to keep our faith?

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Why deny it, why not see things as they are? We have against us the appearances, prejudices, myths, propagandas, concupiscences of this world, time seems to be working against us, and the festivals that are openly celebrated are no longer ours. One after another we have retired all our banners. Laws and customs are no longer Christian. Art and architecture are no longer Christian. The exceptions prove the rule, and very often we have to blush at the sight of what officially bears the name of Christian. The architecture of our modern churches is the ugliest in the world. To us belong mourning, solitude, scorn, shame, prayer, faith, and love offered up, through the rock, to the wounded Body of the Fairest of the children of men.

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...The Passion of Jesus Christ has reconciled the universe, and within the universe man, to God, in the way a mirror is reconciled to the light by opening wide the windows and cleansing the mirror of all impurity. This is what redeption from sin is, this is the restoration, the recreation of the universe in the Blood of Jesus. Thanks to This purifying Blood, the universe again finds in itself traces of the divine, and man, looking at himself, recognizes his profoundest sonship.

Friday, March 21, 2008

As Jesus remained silent and did not reply, the chief priest, standing, said to him, “I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God.”… To the solemn question of the sovereign pontiff, Jesus replied that He was the Messiah. If he had stopped there in his reply, the trial might have gone forever. Such an assertion was not an offense, since the Messiah was in fact to appear and make himself known by his miracles and the fulfillment in him of the prophecies… But he has decided to speak clearly on this subject because no further ambiguity is possible.

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Contrary to what might be imagined, the tribunal would not have been shocked by such a claim… Up to then Jesus was not liable to a capital sentence. The supreme title “Son of God” itself remained ambiguous and had been used without blasphemy by the kings of Israel. The witnesses to the charge were floundering, the accusation was sinking in quicksand, it was Jesus Himself Who refloated the trial, for, to His own destruction, He did not stop there.

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In fact, He added, “Thou hast said it. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming upon the clouds of heaven.” Here, in full Sanhedrin, before the Supreme Court of His nation, face to face with the chief priest, this humble Galilean, His face already covered with spittle, had given voice to the most extravagant of pretensions, claiming for Himself not only Messianity but eternity, empire over the centuries, the Last Judgment, omnipotence, in a word, equality with God Himself.

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Before the chief priest He dares call Himself “Son of Man” and evoke unmistakably before all these notables the great prophecy of Daniel: “As the visions during the night continued, I saw one like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; when he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him, he received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed."

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At one stroke all these people became crazed with rage. Their system of thinking and judging exploded. Each and every one of them knew by heart the prophecy of Israel: Jesus’ few words, “Son of Man,” “clouds of heaven,” had set in motion all the mechanism of memory and exegesis. They all knew very well that the prophecy of Daniel could designate only a being who was literally divine… He claimed to be God in person…

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This pretension, once voiced before the tribunal, could only be false or true. If false and mendacious, then Caiphas was a thousand times right, Jesus had blasphemed and, according to the Law of Moses, He deserved the death reserved for Him… But if it was true, then Jesus had not blasphemed, since God cannot deny Himself. But then Jesus, because He was God in person, was above the Law of Moses, above Moses himself: over Him the Law no longer had any power, for Him it no longer served any purpose, the Law expired at the feet of This Defendant. The Law could do all except judge God. Eternally incompetent and void, a Law murdered with Him Whom it put to death.

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Jesus in fact greatly simplified the problem for the Sanhedrin. No one could have dared hope for a more co-operative accused. His personal claims went far beyond the original accusation. In fact, He left His judges no choice but to condemn Him to death for blasphemy or to kneel down before Him and adore Him.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Nietzsche used to jeer at Christian sweetness and humility. It is easier to make fun of these qualities than to practice them. Here, on this night of Maundy Thursday, face to face with Judas, Jesus’ sweetness and humility are the fruits of truly heroic self-control and love. One of the most striking traits of Jesus’ personality is that, with Him, love is never blind. In order to love, Jesus does not deliberately close His eyes, as we often do. At the very moment when He is giving Judas the most touching proofs of His friendship and His humility, Jesus denounces the betrayal and the traitor. No greater hope has even been given us: whoever we are we will never impose upon Him. We are discovered, and at the same time every way of escape is closed to us, His Heart is our only refuge. This is the truth of our human condition.

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In a few hours Jesus is going to die, and Judas’ feet, which He has just washed, will dangle under a tree above the ground. Jesus knows this. “‘The Son of Man indeed goes His way, as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It were better for that man if he had not been born.’ And Judas who betrayed Him answered and said, “Is it I, Rabbi?’ He said to him, ‘Thou hast said it’” Then Jesus holds out to Judas a morsel of bread dipped in the sauce, according to the Oriental fashion of singling out the guest of honor.

Granted, the greatest Christian Saints have all desired to die… as means of rejoining Christ, and all, beyond death, have hoped still more for the resurrection of the flesh. But let us not forget that Christ has transformed and reversed the meaning of human death: it is no longer punishment. After His own Death, it became essentially a means of rejoining Him and of identifying ourselves with Him on the Cross.

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But on this Maundy Thursday, the eve of His Death, Jesus is alone; no one before Him can extend to Him, across the gulf of death, a helping hand. He sees death approach. He sees it as it is, the violent separation of His Soul from His Body, a dreadful misery. And for the first time since the fall of Adam, this Body and this Soul are so well made for each other that they have no cause to reproach each other. Oh, how unjust that impious action that is going to separate them! Yes, what a frightful misfortune, since death is a malediction, since it is a punishment for sin and precisely in Jesus there was nothing but innocence, nothing to censure, nothing to punish. Here is the one Man without sin, and He begins to tremble at the approach of death.

Monday, March 10, 2008

We saw the pictures. Now, we can see video clips of the actual ceremony of the Coronation of the Infant King by Francis Cardinal George. This event took place at the Shrine of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in Chicago.